Blood of the Balval Churi
Blood of the Balval Churi is an encounter in Dark Dynasty. Enemies * Cursed Mummy (1235 Gold, 152 XP, 95 Energy, 7 HP) * Mummy Pharaoh (1950 Gold, 240 XP, 150 Energy, 1 HP) Transcript Introduction Two hundred and fifty years ago, during the Drake War... Katrina smelled the carnage before she saw it. There was the metallic odor of blood, both sweet and sickening, alluring in its crimson flood yet disgusting because of what the scent portended. Alongside it, twisting through the redness, was the stink of dead flesh and spilled guts. She spurred her horse on, speeding the steed towards the horror she never wished to reach. The smell had warned her of what she'd find, as surely as a seer's visions. But she still felt the breath catch in her throat, her lungs drawing in superfluous air as though they'd forgotten undeath. Katrina almost fell from the saddle. When her boots touched the grass, she tottered a few paces like a drunkard. Wrecked wagons encircled her, their designs and paintwork so familiar that they could have been drawn from her own memories and set down in the present before they were scarred and smashed. Horses lay butchered among the debris, their hides gaping in dozens of cruel wounds. Some of their legs had been hacked away and cast aside. They lay scattered, relics of the senseless savagery. And among all this, strewn about the ground, the slaughtered animals, and the broken wagons, were dozens and dozens of bodies -- an infernal tableau of split bellies, strewn intestines, dismembered limbs, severed heads, and chests punctured or hacked open. Dead faces stared at Katrina. They belonged to strangers, but the scent of their blood told a different tale. In the myriad warring flavors there was a shattering, crushing familiarity. Crimson tendrils snaked through her thoughts, linking the corpses to faces that still lived in her memories. She gazed at a woman's rictus of horror, and the image of a bearded man flashed into her mind. A severed arm, lying far from any of the other bodies, made a red-haired girl dance across her thoughts. Decades of memories surged to the forefront of her brain, undimmed by the centuries which had passed since. She ran through the forest as a little girl, playing with the other children of the clan. Katrina learned to spit and fight and curse, her skills growing sharper with every lesson. The men, women, boys, and girls of the Balval Churi gazed upon her with pride and admiration. Then more images came, thrusting these aside. Those same faces, but unsmiling. Sorrowful. Fearful. Horrified. "Leave us, dead thing." "There's nothing for you here." "Rina is dead. Go, and let us mourn her." "May the gods have mercy on your soul, vampire." The last time she'd seen the men and women of the Balval Churi... When they'd cast her out. Here and there she saw echoes of likeness, features that had survived the centuries by passing from father and mother to son and daughter -- carrying their inheritance of flesh through the generations -- only to be butchered. They hadn't died without a fight. Many of the dead hands, of all ages and both sexes, clutched daggers and cudgels, swords and axes. Most were streaked red, with blood that smelled so very different from the awful purity of human crimson. Bestial bodies bore testament to the ferocious courage of the dead. Fur in many hues lay splattered with dark gore. Leonine, lupine, hircine, and hyenine faces stared blankly at the heavens or else glared in impotent rage. The beastmen had paid in blood and life for their victory. But the Balval Churi were gone. Katrina fell to her knees. Her eyes had found a stranger's face amid the charnel house. A girl, perhaps twenty summers old at the moment her age and eyes had frozen. She was beautiful, even in death. Beautiful and familiar. It was like gazing into a mirror. She knelt and stared, her mind lost between two ages. When the sound of footsteps, the stink of fur and sweat, drifted into the periphery of her senses, she paid them no heed. Katrina just looked upon her mother's cheeks, her father's eyes, and a dozen other remembered things. Redness erupted in her senses. An explosion of blood, overwhelming the gallons which had already been spilled by virtue of its freshness and potency, drew her back to reality. She rose and turned. Heinrich von Malhaven was there, a beastman's body at his feet. A great, gaping slash formed a wide red channel across the creature's chest -- a diagonal rent that split the yellow fur from shoulder to waist. "I'm sorry, Katrina." Her eyes flashed. "This vas Otto's doing." "The markgraf didn't-" "He drove my people from the lands vhere Markgrafin Gretchen velcomed us. In Stromhamre they vould have been safe. Ve could have protected them." She glared at Heinrich, as though challenging him to contradict her. He said nothing. "Their blood is on his hands!" she said. "I vill avenge them. I vill-" "The warband who did this are close. I saw their camp. This one..." He kicked the corpse. "...must have come back to scavenge." "Then I'll kill them first." Conclusion The beastman reached for his sword. His throat was open before his fingers touched it. Katrina gave a second wolf-like enemy his own crimson smile with her other dagger. She'd already moved on by the time his mind comprehended his death and his body fell. Screams and roars filled the campsite. Creatures with the faces and fur of hyenas and wolves, lions and goats, leapt up from their cooking fires and hunks of roasting flesh, from the blades they were sharpening and the wounds they were dressing. They leapt up in time to die. The vampiress darted from pack to pack, her daggers thrusting and slashing. Swift steel pierced brains and opened arteries, spraying blood and instilling death in every quarter. And when those further away turned to her, grabbed their weapons and prepared to join the fray, they found Heinrich von Malhaven at their backs. His zweihander swept heads from necks, and left furry arms on the ground -- still grasping their weapons. A towering beastman with the head of a bull, and a torso twice as wide as even Heinrich's broad chest, charged at Katrina -- a sword with vicious, jagged edges lowered to skewer her. The vampiress shrieked a gypsy war cry and ran at him. She sprang into the air, her daggers braced. He thrust his sword up at her chest. The blade burst through her body and erupted from her back, glistening with blood and gore. The beastman roared his victory. And then his eyes widened. For Katrina's deathly gaze was still locked with his. She slid down his blade, letting steel tear through her organs and shred her innards, until he was within her reach. Her daggers punctured his muscular chest in perhaps three dozen places. She missed his heart. That was a quicker death than she intended for him. Katrina fell with him, still impaled on his sword. Heinrich dispatched the last few in a series of quick cleaves and thrusts. Then he darted to the vampiress, dropped his zweihander, and grasped the hilt of the beastman commander's sword. "Do it!" she hissed. He yanked the sword out. Blood and chunks of organ rained through the air. Katrina howled. "You've avenged your people, daughter of the Balval Churi." "No..." she gasped. "Not yet." Category: Dark Dynasty